You’re reaching and you know it. If Gibson had asked McCain if he agreed with the “Bush Doctrine” in an interview, do you honestly think he would have replied “in what respect Charlie?” or said that it was Bush’s “world view”? No, he would have given an answer exactly or almost exactly like that seen in the second video.

PLEASE stop seeing the world through GOP blinders and wake up to the facts of the situation. New polls out this week show that an increasing number of Americans are “concerned” about the possibility of President Palin, as they rightfully should be. McCain’s pick of Palin was insulting to all of us who put country before politics. I sincerely hope you’ll try and see the other side of the argument.

I did watch the second video. The doctrine has changed over the past 8 years.

I think Charles Krauthammer sums it up fairly well in his Washington Post piece. Looks like Jim’s previous post pulled from the same article.

This “with us or against us” policy regarding terror — first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan — became the essence of the Bush doctrine.

A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.

It’s not. It’s the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush’s second inaugural address: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy’s pledge in his inaugural address that the United States “shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson’s 14 points.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202457_2.html

What is the Bush Doctrine? You can google it and find at least 4 different interpretations.

Thank you for posting the update. I have to admit, the Bush Doctrine was lost on me as well. The concept of it was clear on my mind, but I suppose that I never linked it to a specific title like Reaganomics, Compassionate Conservatism or other horrible ideologies.

Mock Gibson all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that she had NO CLUE about what he was asking. She made the answer up as she went and proved to millions of people that she doesn’t understand the nuances of foreign policy.

I also love how conservatives think she can do no wrong. She’s NEVER lied about anything. Not about the bridge to nowhere, not about making rape victims pay for their own examinations, not about shooting wildlife from helicopters with high-powered rifles. Get off your high horse and take a look at what she really is. A two-bit politician who is putting on airs to throw the conservative base the red meat they so desperately want.

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration — and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

He asked Palin, “Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?”

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, “In what respect, Charlie?”

Sensing his “gotcha” moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine “is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense.”
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Wrong…

…Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed “doctrines” in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines which come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.

Such is not the case with the Bush doctrine.

Yes, Sarah Palin didn’t know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn’t pretend to know — while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and “sounding like an impatient teacher,” as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes’ reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.

She has no clue.

Our standing in the world has been tarnished and if Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain get into office, there is going to be more of the same failed polices as the last 8 years. to Bush and Co., there are no other options. You attack with military force. Period. I’m afraid that my daughter is going to have to learn to duck and cover just like we did in the sixties.